Sunday, March 31, 2013

The last king of Rwanda lives in low-income housing, at a dead end between US Route 66 and State Route 655 in Oakton. He is 76 years old now. His working-class neighbors in the complex of connected Section 8 townhouses know little about his faraway homeland. But Kigeli V Ndahindurwa has lived at the Oak Creek Apartments long enough to have won an honorific. “They call me the King of Africa,” Kigeli said. He gets by on food stamps, a Section 8 housing subsidy, Medicaid, and private donations of cash and clothing, as well as the occasional sale of Rwandan knighthoods to jet-set strangers in search of novelty status symbols.

The report identifies Mexican drug cartels as the most significant organized crime threat to the state of Texas. Six of eight cartels currently have command and control networks operating in Texas. They move people, drugs, cash, weapons, and stolen merchandise back and forth across the border. "The impact of cartel crime is painfully obvious when we look to our neighbors in Mexico, with some 60,000 deaths since 2006 and continued cases of brutal torture," said DPS Director Steven McCraw. "It is a top DPS priority to severely obstruct the range and power of Mexican drug organizations to affect the public safety of Texas citizens." Statewide prison gangs pose the second most significant organized crime threat in Texas. Many gangs now work directly with the Mexican cartels, gaining substantial profits from drugs and human trafficking. Prison gangs operate within and outside the prison system, and are responsible for a disproportionate amount of violent crime. Illegal alien criminals, who may not be affiliated with cartels and gangs, also pose a threat. From October 2008 to December 2012, Texas identified a total of 141,982 illegal immigrant criminal defendants booked into Texas county jails. These individuals are responsible for at least 447,844 individual criminal charges, including 2,032 homicides and 5,048 sexual assaults. Criminal organizations and individuals are engaging in the exploitation and trafficking of children for financial gain. These heinous crimes subject children to violence, extortion, forced labor, sexual assault and prostitution. Some children are more vulnerable to exploitation, including illegal alien children, as well as those who are lost, missing or abducted. There are currently 76,272 sex offenders registered in Texas, and at least 60,871 of these offenders had a child victim.

For generations historians have puzzled over what happened to the Picts and why they seemed to disappear from history but ScotlandsDNA has found a marker that strongly suggests that they did not fade but are alive and well, particularly in the ancient Pictish heartland of Fife, Perthshire, Tayside, the North East and the Moray Firth. Dr Jim Wilson, chief scientist for ScotlandsDNA, found a new Y chromosome marker which arose among the direct ancestors of the Picts. When he tested this new fatherline — R1b-S530 — in more than 3,000 British and Irish men, he discovered that R1b-S530 is 10 times more common in men with Scottish grandfathers than it is in men with English grandfathers. Dr Wilson said: “The finding just popped out of the analysis. While there have been hints of this from previous data, what was surprising was the really huge difference between England and Scotland. It is also a clear sign that although people have moved around in recent times, there remains a core who have stayed at home — for a very long time!” The R1b-S530 marker is estimated to be about 3,000 years old which suggests it was common among the ancestors of the Picts, some of the original inhabitants of Scotland. Alistair Moffat, managing director of ScotlandsDNA said: “Politically, the Picts seemed to vanish after a battle with the Vikings in Strathmore in 839 and the establishment of Kenneth MacAlpin and his dynasty in the middle of the ninth century. But what these fascinating new findings tell us is that kings and dynasties apart, there is a hidden people’s history of Scotland bubbling under the headlines — a history only DNA can reveal.”

Jose Alberto Izquierdo-Gonzalez, 26, an illegal alien from Mexico living in Laredo, Texas, entered the guilty plea in a federal court in the southern district of Texas on March 28, 2013. He faces a possible 30 year prison term on assault with a dangerous weapon and smuggling charges at sentencing, said the U.S. attorney’s office in south Texas. According to court records and testimony, Izquierdo was seen loading persons onto his Ford F-250 truck on January 8, 2013, near the Rancho Viejo Subdivision in Laredo. Agents saw the truck speed away from the riverbanks after Border Patrol vehicles approached. After a short pursuit through a residential area - during which the truck traveled on residential sidewalks and knocked down a stop sign - Izquierdo eventually lost control and came to a stop facing the agents’ vehicles. According to court records, with people still in the bed of the Ford F-150 pickup truck, Izquierdo rammed the Border Patrol vehicles, injuring one of the agents. He then sped away until he lost control again and crashed into a nearby ditch. The people in the truck bed managed to stay in the truck but were treated for injuries. Izquierdo was apprehended almost immediately after he bailed out his truck, leaving his passengers behind. Two of passengers were identified as aliens illegally in the United States who said that they had paid smugglers to get a ride from Izquierdo. Izquierdo remains in custody pending his sentencing hearing that has yet to be scheduled. At that time, he faces up to 20 years for using a dangerous weapon - the Ford F-250 in this case - to assault a federal officer. He also faces a maximum 10-year sentence on alien smuggling charges. Along with the prison time, both crimes also carry up to a possible $250,000 fine.

The guilty plea follows an investigation by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and the Biloxi Police Department. According to court documents, Moonseop Kim, 54, posted an Internet ad offering Korean female escort services in September 2012. Undercover officers with the Biloxi police responded to the ad and conducted a sting operation which resulted in the arrest of Kim and a Korean female. HSI investigators subsequently discovered that Kim was connected to a multi-state prostitution ring operated out of Atlantic City, New Jersey, and that Kim and the female had both overstayed their visas and were illegally in the country. "Criminals who sexually exploit illegal aliens for financial gain often use intimidation or force to threaten these vulnerable women into compliance," said HSI New Orleans Special Agent in Charge Raymond R. Parmer Jr. "HSI actively works with state and local law enforcement partners to identify and bring to justice anyone who victimizes or exploits others for illegal profit." Parmer oversees a five state area of operations to include Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana and Tennessee. Kim is scheduled to be sentenced in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi in June 2013. He faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in federal prison and a $250,000 fine. In addition, Kim faces removal from the United States following the completion of his prison term.

Friday, March 29, 2013

The arrest stemmed from a verbal exchange between Brunswick City Commissioner James Henry Brooks and the family of one of the black teen suspects in the slaying during the suspects' first court appearance. According to his attorney, Brooks told the family of De'Marquise Elkins, 17, that they didn't have to talk to police. Brooks is a distant relative of the Elkins family, his wife, Alicia Brooks, said. She did not know exactly how they are related. The 59-year-old commissioner was charged with influencing a witness and obstructing law enforcement in an investigation, the Glynn County Sheriff's Office said. Brooks was arrested, posted $5,000 bond and left jail. Under the terms of his bond, Brooks is not allowed to have any contact with the victims, witnesses, potential witnesses or investigators involved in the investigation of the murder of 13-month-old Antonio Santiago, who was killed March 21, 2013. The child's mother, Sherry West, has said that two black teenagers came up to her in the street in broad daylight. One pointed a gun at her and told her that if she didn't give him her money he would shoot her and shoot her baby. West said that the teen fired at her, hitting her in one leg and barely missing her head. The black teen, she said, then shot her baby in the face. Elkins and Dominique Lang, 15, have been charged with murder. Elkins' mother, aunt and sister have also been arrested on various charges alleging that they have hindered the investigation. The sister, 19-year-old Sabrina Elkins, was arrested on an evidence tampering charge, the Glynn County Sheriff's Office said. She was named in a grand jury indictment accusing her of helping her mother get rid of the gun that authorities say was used to kill the child. The grand jury also indicted Elkins' mother, Karimah Aisha Elkins, 36, and aunt, Katrina Latrelle Elkins, 33, on charges of making false statements or writings, among other things.
Elkin's mother, Karimah Aisha, and his sister, Sabrina, were ordered held without bond, according to Ron Corbett, the Glynn County's undersheriff. The same grand jury that indicted the women also named De'Marquise Elkins and Lang as being involved in the shooting, prosecutors said. Elkins is accused of malice and felony murder, along with other charges. Lang is accused of felony murder. Although Lang is a minor, he is being charged as an adult. Investigators are looking into the possibility of a gang tie to the shooting.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 27.4% of blacks lived below the poverty line in 2010, compared to 9.9% non-Hispanic whites, while 38.4% of black children (almost five million children) lived in poverty compared to 12.4% of non-Hispanic white children. A high percentage of Hispanics (26.6%) and their children (35%) also live below the poverty line. In some states black men are 20-50 times more likely to see prison time than white men. In Washington, D.C., three out of four black men have or are at risk of serving time in prison. The United States now sends a higher percentage of its black population to prison than South Africa did during the apartheid era.

Why do black and Hispanic dialysis patients live longer than whites? It may be that black and Hispanic patients with kidney disease are more likely to die before they develop kidney failure, and those surviving are generally healthier and hence more likely to live longer with kidney failure than whites.

While the current 12-month average unemployment for black males between 16 and 25 without a high school diploma was 51.6%, the equivalent number for white males was 25.6% — half the number for black males. For Hispanic males between 16 and 25 without a high school diploma, the unemployment rate was 23.3% — actually less than the rate for white males. For females, the numbers are a little bit better: black female high school dropouts between 15 and 25 had an unemployment rate of 45.2%, compared to white female dropouts at 21.6% and Hispanic females at 28.8%. By contrast, the unemployment rate for black male college graduates was 6.7%, while it was 5.9% for black female college graduates. For Hispanic male college graduates, the unemployment rate was 4.7%, while it was 5.8% for Hispanic female college graduates. For white male college graduates, the rate was 3.6%, while the unemployment rate for white female college graduates was 3.8%.

Jail records show that Barstow police arrested Brooks, 41, on Interstate 15 at Stoddard Wells. "We had started to discuss possible next steps," Mitchell Posin, Brooks' attorney, said. "Next thing I know, I heard about this." Records show that Brooks was taken to a San Bernardino County jail in Rancho Cucamonga, California, on $100,000 bail. This is the third time that the North Las Vegas Democrat has been arrested since January 2013. He's accused of making threats toward his colleagues, including Assembly Speaker Marilyn Kirkpatrick. The Nevada Assembly had voted to oust Brooks, after Assembly Majority Leader William Horne called him "potentially dangerous" and said that lawmakers didn't feel safe with him in the building. Brooks also was denied the purchase of a gun in Sparks after he was banished from the chambers. Horne said that Brooks' unpredictable behavior - which included missing meetings, calling news conferences that he never showed up for and posing shirtless for a Las Vegas newspaper - had made the Assembly session look "more like a circus and daytime drama than a serious legislative body." It was the first time the Nevada legislature initiated the expulsion of a member since a lawmaker was accused of libeling other members in 1867, although that case never came to a formal vote.

Researchers found an unconditional, weighted likelihood of delinquency of 11.3%, 16% and 3.4% for black, Hispanic, and non-Hispanic white homeowners, respectively, making black homeowners 7.9 and Hispanic homeowners 12.6 percentage points more likely to be delinquent than non-Hispanic white homeowners.

Auster attempted, in a way, to do to White racialism what Norman Podhoretz and his Trotskyite "liberal" jew inner circle did to American conservativism - replacing White priorities with jewish priorities. Auster wanted "whites" to think about race to the extent it entailed criticism of or even separation from muslims, blacks, or mestizos. But at the prospect of Whites regarding jews likewise Auster's usual pretense at principle and reason and decorum suddenly reverted to the unhinged pathologization and demonization so perfectly typical of his tribe.

Wednesday, March 27, 2013

This includes diagnosis of more advanced and aggressive disease and diagnosis at an earlier age, according to new research. The study found that African-American males who experienced baldness were 69% more likely to develop prostate cancer than those who were not balding. The probability of high-stage and high-grade prostate cancer increased more than two-fold with frontal baldness, which was over 6 times as common in males affected by the disease before 60 years of age. The researchers were surprised to find that smoking and a particular androgen-metabolism genotype appeared to protect against prostate cancer for subgroups of African-Americans. Prior research has examined a possible association between baldness and prostate cancer, which are both linked to androgen metabolism, with a focus on the genes involved, although results were conflicting. Few studies have centered on associations between baldness, prostate cancer, and androgen metabolism genotypes in African-American men.

Rabbi Uzi Rivlin, 65, is accused of molesting two 13-year-old Israeli boys in his home in 2009 and 2010. According to Bergen County prosecutors, the victims had been staying in Rivlin's house during two summers as part of a scholarship fund run by the rabbi. Upon returning to Israel, the victims made the accusations separately to Israeli authorities. The boys, along with three other witnesses, will be flown to the United States to testify at the trial. Rivlin taught at Temple Beth Abraham in Tarrytown, New York and ran the scholarship fund for more than a decade. The Israeli children who attained the scholarships would stay in the United States for several months, living with a host family and attending summer camp. Rivlin was arrested in August 2011, after the FBI notified the local authorities of the accusations. Rivlin, who has been out on bail since his arrest, attended the hearing with the assistance of a Hebrew interpreter.

The move is likely to be denounced as weakening Israel's democratic principles while triggering accusations of official discrimination against Arabs, who form around 20% of the population. The legislation is being proposed under an agreement between Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud Beiteinu bloc and the ultra-nationalist Jewish Home party, who will form part of a new governing coalition along with two other parties. It will be enshrined in Israel's Basic Law – the country's equivalent of a constitution - and lay down that The State of Israel is the National State of the Jewish People. A similar bill introduced in 2011 by Avi Dichter, a former head of Shin Bet, Israel's domestic intelligence agency, was shelved amid an outcry over provisions that included recognizing Hebrew as the sole official language while depriving Arabic of its equal status. It also strictly defined the country's flags, emblems and national anthem while requiring the state to promote Jewish settlement in all areas. No such requirement applied to other groups. Proponents argued that it was aimed at preventing Israel becoming a bi-national state. Critics countered that it prioritized Israel's Jewish identity ahead of its democratic values. The Jewish Home party's leader Naftali Bennett opposes a Palestinian state and instead favors annexing large parts of the West Bank.

Murders with guns are the No. 1 cause of death for African-American men between the ages of 15 and 34. But talking about race in the context of guns would also mean taking on a subject that can't be addressed by passing a law: the family-breakdown issues that lead too many minority children to find social status and power in guns. The statistics are staggering. In 2009, for example, the Centers for Disease Control reported that 54% of all murders committed, overwhelmingly with guns, are murders of black people. Black people are about 13% of the population. The Justice Department reports that between 1980 and 2008, "blacks were six times more likely than whites to be homicide victims and seven times more likely than whites to commit homicide." The dire implications of these numbers is evident in a Children's Defense Fund report that included a chilling historical perspective: The 44,038 black children killed by guns since 1979 (when national data on the age of gun violence victims was first collected) is "nearly 13 times more" than all the black people killed by lynching in the 86-year period of 1882 to 1968. Why are so many young black people using guns to kill their neighbors?Almost 50 years ago, when the 1964 Civil Rights Act was passed, the national out-of-wedlock birthrate was 7%. Today it is over 40%. According to the CDC, the out-of-wedlock birthrate for white children was just 2% in the 1960s. Today it is 30%. Among black children, the out-of-wedlock birthrate has skyrocketed from 20% in the 1960s to a heartbreaking 72% today. The Hispanic out-of-wedlock rate, which has been measured for a much shorter period, was below 40% in 1990 and stands at more than 50% as of the 2010 census. Maybe if black people spent more time raising children and less time making them, gun violence in the black community would be much lower.

In March 2012, GOP Consultant Mike McKenna accurately predicted that Romney would have trouble getting whites to vote for him and says that it is ridiculous that Republicans want to make it easier for immigrants to come to the United States since those immigrants - especially Hispanic ones - will almost certainly end up voting for the Democrats. Apparently, McKenna is not on Sheldon Adelson's payroll.

In the same year, the estimated rate of new HIV infections among black women was 15 times that of white women and over three times that of Hispanic/Latina women. Of the total 5,830 new AIDS diagnoses among Hispanics in 2009, 2,645 or 45% of the cases were adults and adolescents born in other countries. The ranking of the number of new cases by place of birth is: Mexico, Puerto Rico, Central America, South America and Cuba. For Hispanic male homosexuals, foreign-born cases made up 60% of all new AIDS diagnoses in 2009. In Los Angeles County, between 2004 and 2011, the number of persons living with AIDS increased by 5,257 cases. Hispanic residents accounted for over half of the added cases with 40% of the total of those infected with AIDS being Hispanics. Mexican immigration is a major reason why HIV/AIDS cases are on the rise in Los Angeles County. HIV/AIDS-illegal aliens and recent immigrants are costing the American taxpayer huge amounts of money. Federal, state and local governments have difficulty providing health care for needy Americans; nevertheless, the Federal government refuses to control our borders and we keep importing millions of uneducated, Third World immigrants without the ability to care for themselves. If Americans want to reduce HIV/AIDS and reduce health care costs, we should stop immigration from areas like Haiti, the Caribbean, Puerto Rico, Central America and Mexico. That would be a much cheaper preventative alternative than spending billions of dollars for the treatment of HIV/AIDS cases in the United States after they arrive here.

Sunday, March 24, 2013

For every 10% increase in a patient's African racial genetic admixture, risk of disease progression increased by a hazard ratio of 1.27 according to Rodney Rocconi, MD, of the University of South Alabama in Mobile, and colleagues. Study participants in the highest quartile of African racial genetic admixture had a significant and nearly eight-fold risk of recurrence, Rocconi said. Rocconi noted that African-American patients are disproportionately more likely to die of endometrial cancer: They make up 7% of endometrial cancer diagnoses, but account for 15% of all deaths. He added that they are "60% to 80% more likely to die from endometrial cancer" than other populations, even within data from randomized, controlled trials. One major limitation in studying genetic factors of race is the way individuals define race. Many participants have self-defined race, but factors associated with genetics relate to continent or continents of origin, which the researchers referred to as a person's admixture. The authors evaluated the association of racial genetic admixture with endometrial cancer recurrence and progression-free survival (PFS) in case-cohort study of 217 endometrial cancer patients (stage I-IV) with endometrioid histology. Participants were stratified by self-declared race (African American or white) and disease stage. Researchers sampled patients' tumors and tumor-free DNA to evaluate participants' ancestral genetic makeup and estimate racial genetic admixture. The sample consisted of 81 self-declared African Americans and 136 self-declared white participants. Based on self-declared race, there was no significant difference between groups in PFS. When participants were evaluated based on racial genetic admixture, each 1% of African ancestry was significantly associated with a 2.4% increase in risk of disease progression and a 27% hazard increase with every 10% of African ancestry. Participants had a positive protective association with European racial genetic admixture, with a 2.5% increase in hazard for PFS for every 1% genetic admixture and a 23% increase in hazard for PFS for every 10%. By quintile of racial genetic admixture among African-American participants, those in the highest quintile - 72% to 86% - had a nearly eight-fold risk of disease progression. Increasing quintiles of African-American genetic heritage were associated with higher risks of disease progression, though these associations were not significant, which Rocconi noted may be due to the low sample size per quintile. These genetic factors were significantly predictive of "risk of recurrence and PFS in endometrial cancer patients" and that these hazards existed "irrespective of self-designated race." Rocconi noted that further study of genetic definitions of race were important to better understand sources of disparity and improved outcomes in cancer patients.

They were three young Marines, decorated with awards and with seemingly bright futures ahead. But the promise of two of them was cut short by the third Marine, who shot them - and then turned the gun on himself, authorities say. Authorities have released the names of the three Marines involved in the shooting at the Marine Corps base in Quantico, Virginia. They were Lance Cpl. Sara Castromata, Cpl. Jacob Wooley and Sgt. Eusebio Lopez. Authorities said that Lopez was the gunman.

Michoacan's Attorney General's Office said in a statement that the seven bodies had bullet wounds and had been placed individually in the sitting position in chairs near a traffic circle in the city of Uruapan. The office did not provide a motive for killings. In Guerrero state, authorities said that armed men opened fire in a bar in Ciudad Altamirano. Four civilians and three off-duty federal agents were killed. Both states on Mexico's western coast have seen a surge of violence in recent years attributed to drug cartels.

Josselin Yuliana Rodas, 29, was booked into Marin County Jail on suspicion of conspiracy to defraud, child endangerment and filing a false police report. Her bail was set at $75,000. San Rafael police are also seeking charges against the teenager who robbed Rodas at her request. The juvenile, who has since left the country, is a relative of Rodas, said San Rafael police spokeswoman Margo Rohrbacher. The robbery was reported January 4, 2013. Rodas and another woman said that it happened after they left a nearby market with Rodas’ 16-month-old child. The women said that the robber approached while they were putting the baby and the groceries in their car. The robber demanded their purses and struck Rodas in the head with a handgun. The attacker hit the other woman in the knee with the gun during the scuffle. The women said that the robber ripped both their purses from them and also tore a necklace off one of the women. Rodas suffered a welt and cut on the head, and the other woman suffered bruising to her knee. Medics treated them at the scene. The women described the robber as 6 feet or 6-foot-2 and muscular. They said that he was wearing a black hooded sweatshirt with his face covered, and that they were unable to provide police with a racial or ethnic description. As police continued to investigate the case in the ensuing weeks, they developed information that the story might be false, Rohrbacher said. Investigators learned that Rodas had received a notice from immigration authorities that she would have to leave the United States by a certain date. Police suspect that Rodas and the teenage relative conspired to stage the robbery so Rodas could obtain a so-called “U visa.” The U visa allows victims of certain violent crimes, and their family members, to remain in the country while they help authorities secure a conviction against the perpetrator. Police arrested Rodas at her residence. Rohrbacher said that police are asking the district attorney’s office to consider a robbery charge in addition to the other crimes because Rodas planned the robbery and there was a real victim. The woman who was robbed along with Rodas was apparently unaware of the plot, Rohrbacher said. The father of the baby will keep custody of the toddler and the couple’s other children. Rohrbacher said that Rodas and the teenager are the only suspected conspirators, but the investigation is continuing.

Saturday, March 23, 2013

Whites are far more likely to shoot themselves, and African Americans are far more likely to be shot by someone else. The statistical difference is dramatic, according to an analysis of data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A white person is five times as likely to commit suicide with a gun than to be shot with a gun; for each African American who uses a gun to commit suicide, five are killed by other people (usually other blacks) with guns.

An outbreak has already killed seven New Yorkers and sickened 22, spreading mostly through men who meet at bars, parties, or online. "I urge all men who meet these criteria — regardless of whether they identify as gay — to get vaccinated now and protect themselves from this disease before it is too late," says the city's health commissioner. It's not known which websites and apps are linked to the outbreak, but more than half of infected men have HIV — which weakens the immune system and more easily leads to severe infections. Bacterial meningitis infects the membranous lining of the brain and includes symptoms like fever, vomiting, and headaches; it can lead to brain damage or death if left untreated.

The Chicago Public Schools’ plan to close 53 schools and 61 buildings, mostly in black neighborhoods, has some West Side residents vowing to fight the Emanuel administration until the end. To hear some tell it on the West Side, Mayor Rahm Emanuel is a racist liar who doesn’t care about the kids. And they’re just getting started. “I don’t see any Caucasians being moved, bussed, or murdered in the streets as they travel along gang lines, or stand on the steps of a CPS school,” said activist Wendy Matil Pearson as opponents of the school closing plans protested outside Horatio May Elementary Community Academy in the Austin neighborhood. Protesters shouted “save our schools!” as they stood outside, a day after CPS released its list of 53 schools and 61 buildings it plans to close at the end of the school year, to help address a projected $1 billion budget shortfall. May Elementary and nearby Louis Armstrong Math & Science Elementary School would be closed under the CPS plan, and their students would join George Leland Elementary School, although the new Leland would be placed in the current May building. All three buildings are located on the same half-mile stretch of Congress Parkway. The protesters said that the CPS school closing plan would bring nothing more than more street violence and more blight. “We will have more gangs, more murders, more killers, and everything,” said CPS student Brittany Sanders. Kids yelled out the windows of the school as parents, teachers, and activists gathered out front. Dwayne Truss, assistant director of the grassroots school advocacy group Raise Your Hand, said opponents of the school closings would do everything they can to keep schools open. “We’re here to stand up to the bully, a.k.a. Rahm Emanuel, a.k.a. the one-term mayor,” he said. Valerie Leonard, co-founder of the Lawndale Alliance, accused the mayor of trying to drive African Americans out of the city. “He says that he wants to turn around the city of Chicago, make a new Chicago. Does that new Chicago mean no black folks?” she said. “Where are people going to go? They’re not going to stay around in the community if there are no schools!” The protesters said that they don’t buy the mayor’s claim students will get better educations when they are moved out of buildings with low enrollment. The district has said that the money saved from closing schools will be used to improve the “welcoming schools” where students are relocated. “It’s a lie!” protesters repeatedly shouted. The protesters weren’t the first to accuse Emanuel of racism in his school-closing effort. The Chicago Teachers Union has repeatedly said that the school closing plans are racist, as most of the schools that would be closed are in African-American communities. CTU President Karen Lewis said the plan was both “racist” and “classist,” and she called Emanuel “the murder mayor.” “He is the murder mayor,” she said, referencing the city’s recent problems with gun violence. “Look at the murder rate in this city. He’s murdering schools, he’s murdering good jobs. He’s murdering housing. I don’t know what else to call him. He’s the murder mayor.”

Friday, March 22, 2013

State records show that Kevyn D. Orr, who has been appointed emergency manager, has two outstanding liens on his $1 million home in Chevy Chase, Maryland, for $16,000 in unemployment taxes in 2010 and 2011. Two other liens of more than $16,000 in unemployment and income taxes were satisfied in 2010 and 2011, records show. Orr said that he didn't know anything about the liens when shown records of them. "I don't know what they are," Orr said, as his new boss, Gov. Rick Snyder, sat next to him. "That's surprising to me, to be honest." A spokeswoman for Snyder — who appointed Orr to the $275,000 per year post — said that Orr spent the day researching the issue and would pay "in full ASAP." The Washington, D.C., bankruptcy attorney blamed the problems on an outside accountant hired to file his tax returns, said Sara Wurfel, a Snyder spokeswoman. "There was apparently an oversight related to a childcare provider unemployment insurance payment," Wurfel wrote in an email. "Immediately upon learning of the potential issue just today, he took action at once to look into and resolve with the state of Maryland." She said that Snyder's office wasn't aware of the liens until asked about them. "It did not come up in any of the vetting," Wurfel said. Critics of the black emergency manager said that the liens are troubling, since Orr is tasked with improving tax collections. Only 53% of homeowners paid property taxes in 2012, leaving $246.5 million uncollected for Detroit and other governments. City records estimate that, in 2011, Detroit collected $32 million less in income taxes than it was owed. "It's quite interesting that he feels he could manage the city of Detroit and he's having trouble managing his own affairs," said the Rev. Charles E. Williams II, president of the National Action Network of Michigan that is fighting the appointment. "This proves the point that people aren't perfect and democracy isn't perfect. But our community is sticking with democracy and will continue to fight this." Another opponent of the emergency manager, state Rep. Fred Durhal, D-Detroit, said that tax problems aren't a big deal if Orr pays up. "As long as he takes care of it, it's not an issue. I just hope he doesn't forget to collect our taxes," said Durhal, a candidate for mayor.

Sherry West was walking her son, Antonio, in his stroller when two young black males demanded that she turn over all her money to them. “He said, ‘I am going to kill you if you don’t give me your money,’” West said. When she told them that she didn’t have any money to give them, one of the boys shot West in her leg. The man then said, “I am going to kill your baby,” and shot the infant in the head. The horrific incident has prompted a manhunt for the two black suspects. Police said that one of the boys was likely between 13 and 15 years old, while his accomplice could be as young as 10. Brunswick police officers armed with assault rifles went door-to-door hunting for the two black suspects. West has said that the shooter, the older of the two boys, was a black male wearing a long sleeve red shirt who was about 5-feet 7-inches to 5-feet 9-inches tall.

Thursday, March 21, 2013

School board meetings descend into shouting matches. Accusations of racism and anti-Semitism fly. Angry parents turn their backs on board members in a symbolic stand of contempt. Tension in a suburban New York school district is rooted in an unusual dynamic: The families who send their children to public schools are mostly Hispanic and African-American. The school board is almost entirely made up of ultra-Orthodox Jews who send their children to private schools and are bent on keeping taxes low. "It's as if the board of directors of Coke only owned stock in Pepsi," said Steven White, an activist for the public schools. Public-school parents accuse the board of the 9,000-student East Ramapo Central School District of cutting teachers, guidance counselors, art programs, all-day kindergarten and the high school marching band, while diverting public resources to favored Orthodox Jewish institutions. Peggy Hatton, who co-hosts a radio program that features school issues, said, "It's just becoming impossible for our students to apply to colleges when the advanced placement classes are cut, the extracurriculars are cut." How a public school district that's 57% black, including Haitian, and 29% Hispanic, came to be governed by ultra-Orthodox Jews is a case study in changing demographics and the power of democracy. The district, 25 miles north of New York City in Rockland County, has been settled rapidly in recent years by Jews from the Hasidic and other sects who came from their traditional strongholds of Brooklyn. They quickly built their own schools, or yeshivas, raised large families and became a powerful voting bloc. Though not a majority of the population, they have organized to defeat school budgets that increase taxes and to elect members of their own communities to the board. At the same time, public-school supporters are less organized; many are believed to be non-citizens who don't vote. And the area's older residents have also tended to vote against school budget increases. At least seven of the nine board members are ultra-Orthodox Jewish men. A man and a woman who represented the public-school community resigned from the board in January 2013, alleging intimidation by the rest of the board. Two men, one black and one Jewish, were appointed to replace them. The stark division has led to a flurry of lawsuits and petitions, and New York State has intervened, blocking the sale of a public school building to a Jewish congregation and warning the board to change the way it uses public special education money for private schools. While state law provides for a school district to pay some private school expenses, for transportation, textbooks and special education, the state alleges that East Ramapo has been too quick to move children — mostly Jewish children — from the public schools into special education schools run by the Orthodox. Each case funnels thousands of taxpayer dollars to the private schools. The state is also insisting that the district balance its budget, which has an estimated $8 million deficit this school year. At a recent meeting, the board approved borrowing $7.5 million. That meeting illustrated the apparent disdain each side has for the other. There seemed little in common between the board members, most in yarmulkes and black coats, and the onlookers, mostly from racial minorities. About 20 residents shouted in protest, then stood and turned their backs on the board when it decided that in the future, students could address the board only at the end of meetings. "You're not doing right by these children!" shouted Mae Davis of Spring Valley. "What about freedom of speech?" Daniel Schwartz, president of the board, had complained that public comment has become insulting, and he said there's no requirement to offer it at all. "I think there are people who want to be abusive to the board and when it starts we're not going to tolerate it," he said. Some parents have petitioned the state Education Department to remove the school board, a rare step. Department spokesman Tom Dunn would not comment specifically about East Ramapo, but said that the commissioner has the authority to remove local officials "for willful violation of law or neglect of duty or willfully disobeying a decision, order, rule or regulation." The board denies any wrongdoing. It announced at the most recent meeting that it is suing the state in federal court, seeking a judge's declaration that its methods for special education placement are legal. "Nobody has done anything to deprive anybody of anything," Schwartz said. "The monies that are spent on private schools are state mandated just like the monies that are spent on public schools." He says that the district's problems stem from its being "a square peg" — a district that has about 9,000 public school children and an estimated 20,000 in private schools, almost all of them Jewish. "You show me another district where at least two thirds, if not possibly more than that, of the total student population is private school as opposed to public school," Schwartz said in an interview. "You show me a district like that anywhere." Similar patterns affected the school board makeup in Lawrence, on Long Island, but Dunn said that Lawrence did not descend into similar problems. Lakewood, N.J., also has an Orthodox-dominated board and has experienced tensions. Laura Barbieri, a lawyer with Advocates for Justice, which is suing the district on behalf of public-school parents and other taxpayers, said that the board is catering to Orthodox Jewish parents who do not want their children educated with children of color. "Do I think racial discrimination is at the core of this? Yes I do," she said. Schwartz dismisses claims that an Orthodox Jewish-dominated school board can't represent the public school interests. "Men can legislate for women, women can legislate for men, white people can legislate for black people and black people can legislate for white people," he said. "I don't see where it makes any difference." Asked if he felt anti-Semitism played a part in criticism of the board, he said only, "I can make my assumptions." In 2012, he said that some critics were engaging in "an age-old anti-Semitic trope" that Jews were interested only in money. He said money — "more money from the state" — is the solution to East Ramapo's problems. But state Assemblyman Ken Zebrowski said that the division in the community is too deep for that to work. "Public school parents have said, 'We don't want any more money.'" Zebrowski said. "They don't trust their own school board with additional money." The Democratic assemblyman has proposed instead that East Ramapo be divided into two school districts, one for public schools and one for private schools. "This is an unconventional situation and we need an unconventional solution," Zebrowski said.

A Jewish student group has announced that it will be taking further legal action against Twitter over the global networking site's failure to comply with to a French court order to release data on individuals responsible for posting anti-Semitic tweets. "Twitter is playing the indifference card in not respecting the decision of January 24," when a Paris civil court gave the company two weeks to relinquish the requested information, said Jonathan Hayoun, president of France's Union of Jewish Students (UEJF). "In protecting the anonymity of the author of these tweets it is making itself an accomplice and offering a highway for racists and anti-Semites," he said, adding that the the group will be taking legal action against Twitter and its CEO Dick Costolo. The association is claiming 38.5 million euros ($50 million) in damages, which they would donate to the Shoah Memorial fund, according to the text of the summons for Twitter to appear before the civil court's criminal division. UEJF lawyer Stephane Lilti said that the group had filed the summons. A spokesman for Twitter said that it was in discussions with the Jewish student group but that unfortunately they are more interested in these grand gestures than in finding an adequate international procedure to obtain the requested information. "We will appeal tomorrow" to the French court, Twitter said in reference to the January 24, 2013 decision. It added that the French court had only notified it of the earlier ruling "a few days ago." French President Francois Hollande has called for the names of the authors of the anti-Semitic tweets to be released, in line with the court's decision. The union had been pressing Twitter to exercise tighter control of a deluge of anti-Semitic messages posted under the hashtag #unbonjuif (#agoodjew), with some posting that “a good Jew” is “a death Jew.” Twitter later removed some of the offending tweets. In October 2012, Twitter suspended the account of a neo-Nazi group in Germany following a request from the government in Berlin. That was the first time that the US firm had applied a policy known as "country-withheld content", which allows it to block an account at the request of state authorities. If the Jews have their way, ultimately only they will have the right to free speech.

ColorOfChange has asked Fox not to renew its unscripted law-enforcement show and is calling upon advertisers to withdraw support. The group has sent supporters an email in which it asks them to sign a petition to that effect. "Although marketed as unbiased, Cops actually offers a highly filtered version of crime and the criminal justice system — a 'reality' where the police are always competent, crime-solving heroes and where the bad boys always get caught," the email reads in part. It goes on to charge Cops and shows like it with over-representing whites as police officers and under-representing minorities as authority figures. According to ColorOfChange, Cops glosses over issues such as police misconduct and broadcasts "dehumanizing portrayals" of suspects. "We're sending the message to Fox and to advertisers that Cops is not worth saving," says Rashad Robinson, executive director of ColorOfChange. A Fox rep says that the network has not made a decision on Cops and said that it would not comment on the petition.Cops, now in its 25th season, has long delivered strong ratings for the network at a relatively low cost. However, Fox cut back its order for Cops from 22 episodes last season to 16 this season in favor of beefing up its sports programming on Saturday nights, which is when Cops airs. In its criticism of Cops, ColorOfChange says that media representations such as those on Cops can lead to stigmatization of black men. "Against the real-world backdrop of an American culture that views young men like Trayvon Martin and Jordan Russell Davis with suspicion," the email continues, "the stakes couldn't be higher." In January 2013, ColorOfChange launched a similar campaign against a reality special in development at Oxygen, which centered on a rapper who has 11 children with 10 different women. Its petition attracted more than 40,000 signatures and Oxygen eventually shelved the project, which was called All My Babies’ Mamas. ColorOfChange would probably be better off trying to get black men to improve their behavior rather than agitating to get TV shows cancelled.

We “find ourselves falling always for the white queers... wishing we could have more agency in the process, be more intentional about who we desire and how,” reads the official Facebook description of the event. “We are invested in generating a politics of sexuality that compels us to interrogate beauty as privilege and constructed by systems of white supremacy, ableism, capitalism, and heteronormativity,” it continues. The Facebook page states that the event is to take place in the Crystal Room at Brown University on April 8, 2013 from 6-7:30 p.m. The workshop called “Protect me from what I want: a workshop on privilege, power, and desire” is sponsored by an organization called the Comprehensive Allyship Network, according to the Facebook event page. After two artistic performances, participants will apparently be directed to separate between [People of Color] POCs and whites before continuing the discussion. “We will break into POC and White caucus groups for a part of the workshop to unpack some of our specific experiences of racialized desire,” reads the event description. “This will be an intentional, anti-racist, and feminist space.” From the Facebook page, it is unclear exactly which student group is hosting the event other than the Comprehensive Allyship Network, which is not listed as an official student organization. Kelly Garrett, Coordinator of the LGBTQ Center at Brown University, acknowledged the event in an email to Campus Reform, but said that she did not have any further details. The Brown University Events department and the Student Activities department said that they were unaware of the event. Students organizing the event, however, appear to attend Brown University and apparently have hosted similar events in the past, such as the Comprehensive Allyship Network. At time of publication, 899 students been invited, 117 had RSVP’d as attending, and 61 had replied “maybe.”

Priscilla Vaughn, 29, has been charged with attempted murder and imprisonment in Orlando. Orange County sheriff’s deputies were sent to the Crestwood Suites after the department received numerous 9-1-1 calls about screams and growls coming from one of the rooms. When deputies arrived and went to the room, they found a man dripping in blood with significant bites to his penis and testicles as well as damage to his leg, abdomen, chest and fingers, according to Vaughn’s arrest report. The man was rushed to the Orlando Regional Medical Center trauma center. Deputies also found a nude Vaughn who had blood spattered around her mouth and face. She growled and snarled at the deputies as they moved in to arrest her, according to the report. During questioning the man told investigators that he and Vaughn went to dinner then went back to her hotel room where they drank alcohol, she took Ecstasy and they had consensual sex. The man said that during sex, Vaughn became very aggressive and began to bite his genitals. He described it as if she were trying to eat his penis and testicles, according to the report. The man said that he tried to get away but he couldn’t move her off of him, according to the sheriff’s office. Also found in Vaughn’s room was a sex toy with several deep bite marks in it. The damage to the toy indicates a desire to cause severe damage, according to the report. Sheriff’s investigators suspect that the toy was damaged before the attack. Vaughn is being without bail.

Diabetes is already Mexico’s No. 1 killer, taking some 70,000 lives a year, far more than gangster violence. Somewhere between 6.5 million and 10 million Mexicans now have diabetes. Since tap water in Mexico is unsafe, and public drinking fountains rare, most Mexicans swill a sugary drink with their meals. The average Mexican consumes 728 eight-ounce sugary drinks from Coca-Cola per year, an average of two a day, far more than the 403 eight-ounce drinks that are consumed per person annually in the United States. A 2012 federal health and nutrition survey found that 64% of men and 82% of women in Mexico were overweight or obese. Obesity levels in Mexico have tripled in the past three decades. Mexico now has higher obesity rates among children ages 5 to 11 years than any other country. According to a 2012 health survey, 34.4% of children in Mexico are obese. The comparable figure in the United States is 16.9%, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.

Wednesday, March 20, 2013

The 20-year-old black woman, Sharmeka Moffitt, was rushed to the Regional Burn Center at LSU Hospital back on October 21, 2012 after a 911 call brought police to Civitan Park. In the call, Moffitt reported that she had been attacked by three men in white hoodies. State police also later confirmed that "KKK" had been smeared on the hood of Moffitt's car in a paste-like substance, with a racial slur underneath. Moffitt told police that the men doused her in a flammable liquid and set her on fire. Lewis said that she extinguished the fire using water from a nearby spigot before a police officer arrived. Word of the horrific attack spread quickly on social media, with speculation swirling that it was a hate crime that prompted the NAACP to call for a thorough investigation of the incident. Two days later, Winnsboro Police Chief Lester Thomas revealed that their investigation had linked Moffitt's fingerprints to a lighter and a bottle of lighter fluid found at the scene. "The investigation (of) Ms Moffitt has revealed that this was not an attack but a self-inflicted incident that happened to her," said Chief Thomas. Shortly after that announcement, Moffitt's family released a statement, saying, "While this was not the resolution we had expected, it is a resolution, and we appreciate the thorough investigation by the local and state police as well as federal agencies. We are sincerely sorry for any problems this may have caused and wish to express our appreciation for the outpouring of love, prayers and support we have received from friends, acquaintances, church organizations and government officials." Moffitt has since been released from the hospital and returned to Winnsboro. The results of a Louisiana State Police investigation were handed over to the Franklin Parish District Attorney's office in early March 2013. Franklin Parish 5th District Attorney Mack Lancaster has confirmed that his office had filed a bill of information charging Moffitt with one count of terrorizing and one count of false swearing for the purpose of violating public safety. Lancaster says that the quick action of law enforcement kept the impact of her claims to a minimum. "The State Police, the Franklin Parish Sheriff's Office and the Winnsboro Police did a marvelous job of investigating this crime," says Lancaster, "and the labs did a fantastic job of returning DNA and fingerprints very quickly. Thus, they avoided what could have been a very explosive situation." Lancaster also credits the public for allowing law enforcement to do their jobs. "I think her claims were akin to a bomb scare. It just puts the public to be sustained in fear, just a disruption to the general public, what her claims were, and I think the Franklin Parish people deserve a lot of respect for the way they handled this in waiting for law enforcement people to come up with what really happened." Lancaster says that Moffitt isn't a flight risk and won't be required to turn herself in. Bond will be set at her arraignment on April 23, 2013. If convicted, she faces up to 15 years in prison, but probation is also an option.

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

An affidavit released by police states that officers were called to a home to find Cherry Webster screaming in pain with her eyeball out of the socket. Witnesses told officers that they saw Talicia Kiavonna Morrison, 20, leave the scene and gave a description of her car. Police soon found Morrison and brought her in for questioning. Morrison told police that she and Webster got into a fight earlier that day. She admitted that she must have dug Webster's eyeball out with her fingernail. Several of her nails were broken during the fight.
According to the affidavit, Webster told police that Morrison "grabbed her face, grabbed her eye and 'dug her fingers up in there' which caused the eyeball to come out of its socket." Webster was taken to a local hospital and is said to be in good condition.
Morrison was arrested and charged with second degree felony of aggravated assault causing serious bodily injury. Her bail has been set at $70,000.

Monday, March 18, 2013

The Latino police officer, 41-year-old officer Miguel Gomez, had been videotaping his neighbor coming and going from her apartment. Gomez is being charged with unlawful surveillance, which means videotaping someone without their knowledge, without legitimate reason. The neighbor was a 21 years old girl.

African Americans are more likely than whites to develop kidney disease. Doctors can find it difficult to predict which of their African American patients with kidney disease have the highest risk of dying prematurely; however, they do know that cardiovascular disease is most common cause of death in individuals with kidney disease and that there is a strong correlation between blood pressure and kidney disease progression. To investigate the role of blood pressure in African American kidney disease patients' health, Ciaran McMullan, MD (Brigham and Women's Hospital) and his colleagues studied 908 African American adults who had kidney disease due to high blood pressure. The participants had at least one year of blood pressure measurements available, and they were followed for three to 6.4 years. The researchers found that patients whose blood pressure changed significantly from day to day were nearly three times as likely to die from any cause during the study (and nearly six times as likely to die from heart-related problems) than patients whose blood pressure changed very little from day to day. "Larger changes in blood pressure from day to day could identify a high risk group of African Americans with kidney disease," said Dr. McMullan. "In addition, it means that scientists should examine why people have large day to day variations in blood pressure, as this may turn out to be a new area of therapy research."

Mohamed Salim, 27, confessed that he was a member of the militia that wiped out entire villages. But although his confession brought him to the attention of the Border Agency's war crimes unit, he has not been removed from Britain because it would infringe his human rights. Speaking outside his home in Birmingham, Salim said: "I came here because I listened to friends who said it was good to live here and claim asylum here. I don’t pay to live in this house.” In Sudan, Salim was a member of the Janjaweed militia and was paid the equivalent of £50 a day by the Government to take part in the genocide in Darfur. Now he is living in a semi-detached house which he is able to live in rent-free thanks to the National Asylum Support Service, a Home Office-affiliated agency. He is unable to work because of the terms of his asylum and receives £160 a week. He also attends a college, where he learns English for free. The Border Agency says that he is required to report to the Home office but Salim claims that he has no contact with officials. In 2012, a court ruling said that he could not be deported to Sudan because his life could be at risk if he returned. He was then granted asylum under the Human Rights Act.

Parents and teachers at PS 132, a school based in same area of the Bronx where a black 23-year-old recently butchered his mother and littered her body parts around the neighborhood, are outraged at the example Anissa Chalmers is setting for students. Chalmers is under investigation by the Department of Education, though the allegations against the 40-year-old aren't clear. In the gruesome 2009 film, called Gang Girl, her character Queen V ends up on death row after a rampage of robbing, raping and slaughtering. For her initiation into the gang, Queen V shoots an innocent woman and later she rapes and kills a man in a revenge attack then slays three others. "Open, motherf***er. You like the way that tastes, n*****" she says in the film before putting a gun in a man's mouth and pulling the trigger. Approximately 172 student incidents have been reported at Chalmers' school over 112 days in the current academic year. The vast majority were offenses such as smoking, swearing and mistreating school property but others were fights among students. Chalmers earns $129,920 a year and has been principal for around six years but some claim that she's a bad role model for the students.
"She's like the 'Gang Girl' principal," one teacher said. "The video is reflective of her personality at school — the bullying, in-your-face approach. She can be very intimidating." The Department of Education rated PS 132 a D overall but in the student performance and school environment categories it scored an F. An eight-year-old student at the school used a razor to slash the neck of a nine-year-old classmate in June 2012. Haifa Soto said that her son, Zahid Benzan, 10, cracked his front tooth during an altercation with another student in 2012 but she said that the principal wouldn't file a report or get the police involved. "She just told me, "Go to the dentist,"" Soto said. In 2008, two school secretaries were arrested and charged with stealing $200,000 in school money. They were put on probation and ordered to pay back $106,000.

In the prospective trial, a three-month regimen of daily vitamin D increased circulating blood levels of vitamin D and resulted in a decrease in systolic blood pressure ranging from .7 to four mmHg (depending upon the dose given), compared with no change in participants who received a placebo. Systolic blood pressure, the top and highest number in a reading, is pressure in the arteries when the heart beats. Diastolic blood pressure, the bottom and lower number, is pressure in the arteries between heart beats. "Although this needs to be studied further, the greater prevalence of vitamin D deficiency among African-Americans may explain in part some of the racial disparity in blood pressure," said John P. Forman, M.D., M.Sc., lead author of the study and Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Renal Division and Kidney Clinical Research Institute at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts. African-Americans have higher rates of hypertension and lower levels of circulating 25-hydroxyvitamin D (vitamin D3 or cholecalciferol) than the rest of the U.S. population.

"The findings demonstrate how the cumulative effect of natural selection, acting on many small genetic changes, can produce rapid and dramatic change," said former Harvard postdoctoral fellow Catherine Linnen, now an assistant professor at the University of Kentucky. "This helps us to understand, from a genetic perspective, the uncanny fit between so many organisms and their environments. By acting on many small changes, rather than a handful of large ones, natural selection can produce very finely honed adaptations." Surprisingly, that honing occurred in a single gene. The role of this gene, called agouti, in camouflage was first discovered by researcher in 2009, and it is responsible for changes in pigmentation in the coats of many animals. Every domesticated black cat, for example, has a DNA deletion in that gene. What surprised the researchers, however, wasn't that the gene was involved, but that each of the nine mutations were tied to a unique change in the animal's coats, that all the new mutations led to more camouflaging color, and that the mutations occurred in a relatively short, 8,000-year time frame. "Essentially, it seems as though these mutations - each of which makes the mouse a little lighter and more camouflaged - have accumulated over time," Hopi Hoekstra, Harvard professor of organismic and evolutionary biology and molecular and cellular biology, said. Focusing on these mutations, researchers then examined the DNA of natural populations of the mice to determine whether the mutations are actually beneficial. "For each of the mutations associated with color change, we also find a signal that's consistent with positive selection," Hoekstra said. "That implies that each of the specific changes to pigmentation is beneficial. This is consistent with the story we are telling, about how these mutations are fine-tuning this trait." While the findings offer valuable insight into the way that natural selection operates, Hoekstra said that they also highlight the importance of following research questions to their ultimate end. "The question has always been whether evolution is dominated by these big leaps or smaller steps," she said. "When we first implicated the agouti gene, we could have stopped there and concluded that evolution takes these big steps as only one major gene was involved, but that would have been wrong. When we looked more closely, within this gene, we found that even within this single locus, there are, in fact, many small steps." Going forward, Hoekstra said, her team hopes to understand the order in which the mutations happened, which would allow it to reconstruct how the mice changed over time. "For evolutionary biologists, this is exciting because we want to learn about the past, but we only have data from the present to study it," she said. "This ability to go back in time and reconstruct an evolutionary path is very exciting, and I think this data set is uniquely suited for this type of time travel." Taking the time to understand not only which genes are involved but which specific mutations may be driving natural selection, Hoekstra said, can give researchers a much fuller picture of not only the molecular mechanisms by which mutations alter traits, but also the evolutionary history of an organism. "By doing this, we've discovered all kinds of new things," she said. "While we often think about changes happening in the entire genome, our results suggest that even within a very basic unit - the gene - we can see evidence for evolutionary fine-tuning."

The attack comes three months after the fatal gang-rape of a woman aboard a New Delhi bus outraged Indians. Authorities detained and questioned 13 men in connection with the latest attack, which occurred as the couple camped out in a forest in Madhya Pradesh state after bicycling from the temple town of Orchha, local police officer R.K. Gurjar said. The men beat the couple and gang-raped the woman. They also stole the couple's mobile phone, a laptop computer and 10,000 rupees ($185). The woman, 39, was treated at a hospital in the nearby city of Gwalior. A photo showed the woman walking while being escorted by police to the hospital. Her face was concealed with a hood, a common practice in India, where law does not allow rape victims to be identified publicly to protect them from the stigma attached to rape in the backward country. Recently, the Swiss government issued a travel notice for India that included a warning about increasing numbers of rapes and other sexual offenses in the South Asian nation. India has seen outrage and widespread protests against attacks on women since December 2012's fatal gang-rape of a young woman on a moving bus in New Delhi, the capital. The crime horrified Indians and set off nationwide protests about India's treatment of women and spurred the government to hurry through a new package of laws to protect them. One of six suspects in the December 2012 attack was found dead in a New Delhi jail recently. Authorities said that he hanged himself, but his family and lawyer insisted foul play was involved. A magistrate is investigating. Four other men and a juvenile remain on trial for the attack.

Friday, March 15, 2013

The African-American abortion rate, according to a study conducted by the Guttmacher Institute, is 41 per 1,000 women among the 15-19 year old age group. The national average abortion rate is 18 per 1,000 women among 15-19-year-olds. The rate is also four times higher than the teen abortion rate among non-Hispanic whites, which sits at 10 per 1,000 women, and twice as high as the Hispanic rate of 20 per 1,000. The state-by-state study also reveals that in states with high abortion rates, teen pregnancy among African-Americans has the greatest chance of resulting in an abortion than it does in any other racial group. In New York, for example, pregnancies among black teens — excluding miscarriages — result in abortion 67% of the time. New York has the highest teen abortion rate in the country, according to the study. Another study shows that the number has been nearly halved since the recorded high of 80 per 1,000 in 1990. But the percentage of pregnancies that result in abortion among black teenagers has stayed nearly the same, with a 42% ratio in 1990, and a 40% ratio in 2008. Another recent study, also from the Guttmacher Institute, revealed that black women account for 30% of all abortions, despite African-Americans making up only 13% of the total population.

Louisa Lombard recounts her visit to the village of Tiringoulou in the Central African Republic, where two villagers said that their genitals had been stolen. One, a tea vendor, was attacked by a stranger who only had to grab his hand. "The tea seller felt an electric tingling course through his body and immediately sensed that his penis had shrunk to a size smaller than that of a baby’s," writes Lombard, a postdoctoral fellow at UC Berkeley. The second victim said that he lost his genitals "in the fray" as yells erupted from the crowd. According to Lombard, rebels who govern the tiny hamlet said that they later gunned down the alleged penis thief after he escaped from a holding cell. Lombard explains that the belief in "penis-snatching" — a form of witchcraft — is a manifestation of anxieties caused as villages grow into cities. So it's more commonly seen in larger population centers such as Nigeria, Lagos, or Cameroon.

A ground-breaking study issued in 2010 indicated that a vaginal gel containing a HIV drug can sharply reduce infections in women who use it before and after sex. However, a test of the gel and two types of anti-HIV pills among more than 5,000 women in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Uganda showed that, based on blood tests, more than 70% did not use the medication as instructed. "We are obviously disappointed in the results. We were very hopeful that these products, which we know have been effective in other studies and clearly have a lot of promise, would work," Jeanne Marrazzo, a researcher on the project for the University of Washington, said. "Women did not use consistently any of the products. Adherence was very low," said Marrazzo, part of the project known as the Vaginal and Oral Interventions to Control the Epidemic (VOICE). HIV/AIDS experts said that the results showed how important a factor human behavior is when devising ways to prevent HIV. "HIV prevention is never just bio-medical - behavior is key. What we've learned from VOICE and other trials is that adherence to the prescribed dose - the behavioral component - is the variable that determines effectiveness," said Mitchell Warren, director of the HIV prevention advocacy group AVAC. East and southern Africa are the areas most heavily affected by the HIV epidemic. Out of the total number of people worldwide in 2009 living with HIV, 34% were in 10 countries of southern Africa, according to the U.N. Program on HIV/AIDS. Experts have been searching for years for inexpensive, safe and simple medications to decrease the risk of transmission among a population that is largely destitute and with little access to quality health care. The study also found the group most likely to contract HIV - unmarried women under 25 - was also the most likely not to use any of the medicines. The three-year study that started in September 2009 tested a daily tablet called Truvada, which was approved for HIV prevention in July 2012 by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration after it was shown to significantly reduce the risk of HIV infection when used as a preventative measure. The gel with a drug called tenofovir, which a previous study showed reduced HIV infections in women by 39% over two and a half years, and an oral tenofovir tablet were also tested. Researchers have been trying for years to formulate a microbicide - a gel, cream, ring or tablet inserted into the vagina or rectum before sex to prevent transmission of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that causes AIDS.

He said that 94,000 schoolgirls also fell pregnant in 2011, and 77,000 had abortions at state facilities. About 10% of South Africans are living with HIV, official statistics show. Motsoaledi said that some pregnant girls - aged between 10 and 14 years of age - also tested positive for HIV. More than five million people in South Africa are HIV-positive - about 10% of the total population. In 2012, more than 260,000 people with AIDS in South Africa died - almost half the figure of all those who died in the country.

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

The 42-year-old Latino, Mike Rios, was officially removed from the Moreno Valley School Board after being sentenced. Rios was convicted of pimping, pandering and insurance fraud for trying to get women and girls to work for him as prostitutes while he was sitting on the board. He is accused in another case of shooting at two men who followed him to his house after they got into an argument at a bar in February 2012.

Data collected from a survey taken in January 2013 indicates that all demographics and partisan groups experienced an increasing lack of faith in government leadership, according to a release posted on the Pew Research website. “However, there are disparities,” the official summary noted. “[M]ore than twice as many Hispanics as whites (44% vs. 20%) trust the federal government, and more blacks (38%) than whites trust the government.” Researchers additionally observed that younger Americans trust the government more than their older counterparts, and that more liberals believe in the administration of Barack Obama than either independents or Republicans. Conversely, distrust of federal government is presently at 73%. Earlier on in the Obama administration, it reportedly hit a record high of 80 percent, according to a graph constructed and presented by researchers at Pew. Public perception of federal government has also gone down during Obama’s presidency – particularly among Democrats. “Since Barack Obama’s first year in office, public assessments of the federal government dropped nine points,” the release stated, citing findings from a survey conducted in April 2012. “Most of the change was among Democrats and independents, as the level of favorable views of government among Republicans was already low.”

Such tribal justice is a stark reminder of the difficulty in establishing a credible civilian administration in Pakistan's semi-autonomous region bordering Afghanistan, despite a series of military operations in the area and Western nations pouring in millions of dollars to help build infrastructure. Punjab native Anwar Din, 27, was posted in 2012 to the Parachinar area of Kurram agency where he met Intizar Bibi, 19, while manning a checkpost near her home. The two embarked on a romantic relationship, tribal sources said, and he tried to elope with her when he was later posted to the disputed Kashmir region. It was not immediately clear what evidence there was, if any, of a romance. "The girl left her home on Monday and met Anwar Din when villagers saw them," said Munir Hussain, the head of the local jirga, or tribal court, that sentenced Din to death. "We took the girl into custody and took the boy to the local graveyard where he was stoned to death and buried." A government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the jirga had ruled that the woman must be shot to death. It was not immediately clear if this had already taken place. Kurram, the only part of Pakistan's largely lawless border region that has a significant Shi'ite population, is racked by sectarian violence between Sunni and Shi'ite tribes. Anti-Shi'ite ideology from the Taliban and al Qaeda has meant years of bloody fighting. Bibi is Shi'ite while Din was Sunni, Hussain added. The Federally Administered Tribal Areas have never been fully integrated into Pakistan's administrative, economic or judicial system. Instead, families and tribes often take justice into their own hands, presiding over "jirgas" or "panchayats", gatherings of elders that hand down punishments including rape, killing and the bartering of women to settle scores and restore honor. In such tribal justice, women often fair far worse than men. Hussain said that the jirga had also requested that another Pakistani soldier, Saif Ullah, be handed over for helping the couple meet and coordinate the planned elopement. "The army is here for our security but if they engage in such activities we will not let them stay here," Hussain said. "This is an insult to tribal customs. We will revolt against this."

Tuesday, March 12, 2013

In our social lives, we tend to gravitate toward people who have things in common with us, whether it's growing up in the same town, disliking the same foods, or even sharing the same birthday. And research suggests that babies evaluate people in much the same way, preferring people who like the same foods, clothes, and toys that they like. This preference helps us to form social bonds, but it can also have a dark side. Disliking people who are different than us may lead us to mistreat them, and excuse - or even applaud - cases in which others mistreat people who are different than us. Are the roots of such tendencies present in infancy? To find out, psychological scientist Kiley Hamlin, now a professor at the University of British Columbia, conducted two studies as a graduate student at Yale University with her advisor Karen Wynn and colleagues. The researchers had 9- and 14-month-old infants choose which food they preferred: graham crackers or green beans. The infants then watched a puppet show in which one puppet preferred graham crackers, while another preferred green beans. That is, one puppet demonstrated that its food preference was the same as the infant's, while the other demonstrated that its food preference was different from the infant's. After the puppets chose their foods, infants then watched another puppet show, in which either the similar puppet or the dissimilar puppet dropped its ball and wanted it back. On alternating events, infants saw that one character always helped the ball-less puppet by returning the ball to him, while another character always harmed the ball-less puppet by stealing the ball away. Finally, infants were given the chance to choose between the helper (giving) and harmer (stealing) puppets. Unsurprisingly, infants' choices revealed that almost all the infants in both the 9- and 14-month-old groups preferred the character who helped the similar puppet over the character who harmed the similar puppet. Previous research has shown that infants like people who are nice to totally unknown individuals, so it makes sense that they would also like people who are nice to individuals who are similar to them. Far more surprising was that almost all the infants at both ages preferred the character who harmed the dissimilar puppet over the character who helped him. Infants' preference for those who harmed dissimilar others was just as strong as their preference for those who helped similar ones. According to Hamlin, these findings suggest that "like adults, infants incorporate information about not only what people do (e.g., acting nicely or meanly) but also whom they do it to (e.g., a person who is liked or disliked) when they make social evaluations." The researchers confirmed these results in a second experiment, which included a neutral puppet that had demonstrated no food preference and no helpful or harmful behaviors. This time, the 14-month-olds - but not the 9-month-olds - preferred the character that harmed the dissimilar puppet over the neutral puppet, and the neutral puppet over the helper of the dissimilar puppet. These results suggest that when a dissimilar individual is in need, 14-month-olds generate both positive feelings toward those who harm that individual and negative feelings toward those who help him. The researchers suggest that between 9 and 14 months, infants develop reasoning abilities that lead to these more nuanced social evaluations. These results highlight the fundamental mechanisms that underlie our interactions with similar and dissimilar people. "The fact that infants show these social biases before they can even speak suggests that the biases aren't solely the result of experiencing a divided social world, but are based in part on basic aspects of human social evaluation," says Hamlin.

Sunday, March 10, 2013

For Yang, Joy City is not so much a consumer mecca as an urban Serengeti that she prowls for potential wives for some of China’s richest bachelors. Yang, 28, is one of China’s premier love hunters, a new breed of matchmaker that has proliferated in the country’s economic boom. The company she works for, Diamond Love and Marriage, caters to China’s nouveaux riches: men, and occasionally women, willing to pay tens and even hundreds of thousands of dollars to outsource the search for their ideal spouse. In Joy City, Yang gave instructions to her eight-scout team, one of six squads the company was deploying in three cities for one Shanghai millionaire. This client had provided a list of requirements for his future wife, including her age (22 to 26), skin color (“white as porcelain”) and sexual history (yes, a virgin).

This happens already in the developing fetus. An international team of scientists has made this discovery. As the first in the world, they scanned the entire genome of hundreds of sick and healthy people to see if there is an interaction between genes and a very common virus - cytomegalovirus - and to see whether the interaction influences the risk of developing schizophrenia. And it does. Women that have been infected by the virus - and around 70% have - will have a statistically significant increased risk of giving birth to a child who later develops schizophrenia if the child also has the aforementioned gene variant. This variant is found in 15%. The risk is five times higher than usual. People infected with cytomegalovirus most often do not know it, as the infection by the virus, which belongs to the herpes virus family, is usually very mild. But the researchers stress that there is no cause for alarm - even if both risk factors are present in mother and child, there may be a variety of other factors that prevents disease development in the child. But as schizophrenia affects 1% of the global population, this new knowledge is very important. "In the longer term, the development of an effective vaccine against cytomegalovirus may help to prevent many cases of schizophrenia," says Professor of Medical Genetics at Aarhus University, Anders Børglum. "And our discovery emphasizes that mental disorders such as schizophrenia may arise in the context of an interaction between genes and biological environmental factors very early in life."

Over 3,000 Muslim protesters turned violent over derogatory remarks against the Islamic Prophet Mohammed supposedly made by a young Christian, Sawan Masih, 28, three days earlier, police official Multan Khan said. The exact number of houses in Joseph Colony, a Christian neighborhood in Badami Bagh area, were not immediately known but police and rescue officials said that they belonged to low to middle-class families from the minority community. "Police arrested Masih, a sanitary worker, on Friday night while the incident actually happened on Wednesday evening," Khan said. He said that the arrest was made when Masih's barber friend Shahid Imran complained that he had made blasphemous remarks about the Muslim Prophet Mohammed, adding that Christians had fled the area, fearing a backlash. Protesters began to assemble in the area and later set on fire houses and other items including furniture, crockery, auto rickshaws, bicycles and motorbikes belonging to local Christians. Dr Ahmad Raza, in-charge of local rescue operations, and the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) put the number of houses burnt at more than 100. "At least 160 houses, 18 shops and two small churches were burnt by protesters," Raza, who was busy in rescue operations in the area, said. Expressing grief and anger at the attack, HRCP chairwoman Zohra Yusuf put the number of houses burnt during the protest at over 100. Blasphemy is an extremely sensitive issue in Pakistan, where 97% of the population are Muslims, and allegations of insulting Islam or the Muslim Prophet Mohammed can prompt violent outbursts of public anger, even when unproven. The laws came under the international spotlight in August 2012 when 14-year-old Christian girl Rimsha Masih was held for three weeks in a high security prison for allegedly burning pages from the Koran. Muslims only believe in freedom of religion for Muslims and no one else.

Saturday, March 9, 2013

Since the November election, in which Obama won huge majorities among minority voters, it’s been taken as gospel that the Republican Party must, for its own survival, seek to appeal to those groups by moving to the left on topics such as immigration reform. But as the nation becomes more diverse, the demographic shift can cut the other way, too: Some Democratic voters are likely to move to the right. It’s assumed that, as the United States becomes increasingly non-white, white Democrats will continue to support the party. But a substantial amount of social-science evidence suggests a different conclusion: As the United States becomes more racially and ethnically diverse, liberal whites might start leaning Republican. As ethnic groups mix, voters become more exclusionary and tend to vote for more racially conservative candidates — which may make it more difficult to maintain a diverse Democratic Party and could tilt the field in favor of Republicans.

Friday, March 8, 2013

"I refused to apologize to the Zionist lobby in America on the previous statements hostile to Zionism under pressure from the American government, so the prize was withdrawn," Samira Ibrahim posted. Victoria Nuland, the State Department spokeswoman, had said that Ibrahim was on her way back to Egypt and would not participate in a State Department ceremony honoring nine other recipients of the International Women of Courage Award. Jewish power in America on display once again.

When they graduated from city high schools, students in a special remedial program at the Borough of Manhattan Community College couldn’t make the grade. They had to re-learn basic skills — reading, writing and math — first before they could begin college courses. In sheer numbers it means that nearly 11,000 students who got diplomas from city high schools needed remedial courses to re-learn the basics. New York City schools tend to be very diverse.

This means that the number of Americans not in the labor force increased 296,000 between January and February 2013. If not for a shrinking labor force, the U.S. unemployment rate would be over 11%. Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rate for whites (6.8%) declined in February 2013 while the rates for adult men (7.1%), adult women (7.0%), teenagers (25.1%), blacks (13.8%), and Hispanics (9.6%) showed little or no change. The jobless rate for Asians was 6.1% (not seasonally adjusted), little changed from a year earlier. It seems that the more likely you were to vote for Obama, the more likely you are to be unemployed.

Rabbi Brad Hirschfield, whose day job is serving as president of the non-denominational Jewish group CLAL-The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, leads an on-line discussion that he begins by admitting he doesn’t know why Marco McMillian was killed or who or what could have incited the brutal crime or if, indeed, anyone one or any group had any role in doing so. But that doesn’t deter him from beginning his piece with the provocative title “What role does Christianity play in the murder of the openly gay mayoral candidate in Mississippi?” According to Hirschfeld, Christians are clearly guilty until proven innocent.

Juan Williams lifted — sometimes word for word — from a Center for American Progress report, without ever attributing the information, for a column that he wrote recently. Williams has pinned the blame on one of his researchers.

Thursday, March 7, 2013

Christina Edkins had only been the top deck of the number 9 First West Midlands service for a matter of minutes when she was attacked as it pulled into a stop in Birmingham city center. The popular white teenager had been on her way to school. Emergency services rushed to the scene after the bus driver reported that a passenger had been wounded. But despite frantic efforts by passengers and paramedics to resuscitate her, she was pronounced dead at the scene. A 22-year-old black man was arrested a short distance away on suspicion of her murder after a huge manhunt. He was held in Harborne Road during a foot chase after officers spotted a black man who fitted the description of the suspect acting furtively at the back of Morrisons.

The government should act to stop the vicious killings and discrimination that they faced, said Navi Pillay. The mutilation and murder of people with albinism is often linked to witchcraft, the UN says. Only five people have been convicted in Tanzania since 2000 for killing people with albinism, it adds. Some 72 people have been killed in that time. In a statement, Pillay said that four attacks on Tanzanians with albinism had been documented in just 16 days between the end of January and mid-February 2013. They included the murder of a seven-year-old boy, Lugolola Bunzari, on January 31, 2013 at Kanunge village in the Tabora region. His attackers slashed his forehead, right arm and left shoulder, and chopped off his left arm just above the elbow. The boy's grandfather, aged 95, was also killed in the attack as he tried to protect his grandson; a seven-month-old baby, Makunga Baraka, narrowly escaped death on February 5, 2013 after armed men attacked his home in the Simiyu region. Villagers chased the attackers away and surrounded the house to protect him. The baby and his mother were taken to the police station the following morning and given temporary sanctuary; a 39-year-old woman Maria Chambanenge was attacked on February 11, 2013 by five armed men, including her husband, in Mkowe village in the Rukwa region. They hacked off her left arm while she was sleeping with two of her four children. The five suspects were subsequently arrested and the victim's arm recovered - their trial is reportedly under way; a 10-year-old boy, Mwigulu Matonange, was attacked on his way home from school and his left arm chopped off above the elbow by two unidentified men in Msia village in Rukwa. Three men have been arrested in connection with the attack. "These crimes are abhorrent. People with albinism have the right to start living, like anyone else, without fear of being killed or dismembered," Pillay said. Tanzania's authorities needed to step up efforts to bring the attackers to justice, she added. Public awareness campaigns should also be launched to end the stigma associated with albinism, Pillay said. "I am deeply alarmed by the general discrimination and social exclusion many people with albinism suffer, as a result of their skin colour, not just in Tanzania but in other countries as well," she said. Some witchdoctors say that magic charms are more powerful if they contain body parts from people with albinism - this has led to a lucrative criminal trade in these body parts.